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Suomen Antropologi Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society SUOMEN ANTROPOLOGI JOURNAL OF THE FINNISH ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY VOLUME 34 NUMBER 4 WINTER 2009 Editor’s note.............................................................................................................. 3 EDVARD WESTERMARCK MEMORIAL LECTURE Marilyn Strathern Comparing Concerns: Some issues in organ and other donations .................................................... 5 ARTICLES Anu Lounela Sovereignty and Violence: Contested forest landscapes in Central Java .......................................... 22 Anna Tsing Politics, History, and Culture: Comments on Anu Lounela’s “Sovereignty and Violence” .......... 40 Henri Onodera The Kifaya Generation: Politics of change among youth in Egypt ..................................................... 44 FORUM: A DISCUSSION OF JOHN LIEP’S RECENT BOOK, A PAPUAN PLUTOCRACY: RANKED EXCHANGE ON ROSSEL ISLAND (2009) John Liep An Overview of Rossel Island Exchange ............................................................................................. 65 Joel Robbins Equality, Inequality, and Exchange ................................................................................................... 71 SUOMEN ANTROPOLOGI • JOURNAL OF THE FINNISH ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY VOLUME 34 NUMBER 4 WINTER 2009 Chris Gregory On the Ranking of Shells and People ................................................................................................. 81 Ton Otto Exchange and Inequality, Time and Personhood .............................................................................. 91 John Liep Response to Comments ...................................................................................................................... 99 BOOK REVIEWS AND CRITICAL ESSAYS Mwenda Ntarangwi, David Mills and Mustafa Babiker (eds). African Anthropologies: History, Critique and Practice ....................................................................................................................... 113 Timo Kallinen Pamela L. Geller and Miranda K. Stockett (eds). Feminist Anthropology: Past, Present, and Future ................................................................................................................. 116 Tuulikki Pietilä Walker, Anthony R. (ed.). Pika-Pika: The Flashing Firefly. Essays to Honour and Celebrate the Life of Pauline Hetland Walker (1938–2005) ........................................................................... 121 Clifford Sather Edson, Gary. Shamanism: A Cross-Cultural Study of Beliefs and Practices .................................... 124 Jan Svanberg Wynn, Peter Kirby (ed.). Boundless Worlds: An Anthropological Approach to Movement ............... 127 Annika Teppo NEWS Finnish Africanist’s Work Gets International Recognition: Tuulikki Pietilä receives the 2009 Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize .................................................................................................. 130 Timo Kallinen Publications Received ...................................................................................................................... 131 Information for Contributors.......................................................................................................... 132 FORUM A DISCUSSION OF JOHN LIEP’S RECENT BOOK, A PAPUAN PLUTOCRACY: RANKED EXCHANGE ON ROSSEL ISLAND (2009) · JOHN LIEP, JOEL ROBBINS, CHRIS GREGORY, TON OTTO · In September 2009 a group of scholars met at Aarhus University, Copenhagen, for the defence of Mag. Scient. John Liep’s doctoral thesis, published by Aarhus University Press under the title, A Papuan Plutocracy: Ranked Exchange on Rossel Island (2009). The book is the first full-scale modern ethnography of the well-known shell money system on Rossel Island—one of the most complex such systems on record. Liep’s ethnography is very powerful, but more than that, the book is built around an ambitious and unusual critique of notions of reciprocity and the gift economy that are of great general importance. Liep’s three examiners were Joel Robbins, Chris Gregory and Ton Otto. In light of the depth of debate that marked the occasion of the defence, there was a general feeling that the discussion deserved a wider forum. The result is the texts that are published together here. JOHN LIEP. A Papuan Plutocracy: Ranked Exchange on Rossel Island. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009. Pp. 376. ISBN: 978-87-7934-446-4 AN OVERVIEW OF ROSSEL ISLAND EXCHANGE · JOHN LIEP · In the enchanted archipelagos east of New Guinea known as the Massim by anthropologists, remote Rossel Island is the last outpost facing the trade wind from the southeast. Its 4,000 inhabitants diverge from the rest of the Massim peoples by speaking an extremely difficult Papuan language. They thus represent the last remnant of the autochthonous population that peopled the Massim islands before the invasion of Austronesian immigrants into the region some two thousand years ago. In some respects Rossel culture differs from that of the Austronesian-speaking societies to the west but Austronesian influence is also marked, notably in matrilineal descent and in the exchanges of valuables of shell and greenstone that permeate the social life of the Rossel Islanders. Ranked exchange of shell decorations is well known from the Massim kula but the hierarchy of Rossel Island money is outstanding by virtue of its extraordinary complexity. The question is thus posited of the derivation of such an objectified hierarchy in an island otherwise characterised by the absence of descent group ranking, and with what, on the face of it, seems to be a common Melanesian big man system. It is my hunch that this shell hierarchy and the ranked financial operations in which it is activated must be understood in connection with the wider Austronesian environment in the Massim. Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 65 34(4) Winter 2009 PO Box 59, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland FORUM: RANKED EXCHANGE ON ROSSEL ISLAND A majority of students of Pacific prehistory now agree that the Austronesians who entered Melanesia some 3,500 years ago had a hierarchical social organisation with chiefs, nobles and commoners. In Polynesia and Micronesia, which were settled only by Austronesians, their hierarchies survived and expanded. But in western Melanesia, where the invaders mixed with Papuan populations, they devolved into so-called egalitarian big man systems although there are traces of hierarchy in many places. This is also the case in the Massim. I believe that the ranked system of exchange on Rossel is a legacy from a time when the island was in articulation with Austronesian hierarchical formations to the west. In the prologue of my book I therefore describe the Massim as a background to Rossel Island. I analyse Trobriand hierarchy and asymmetric exchange and I trace remnants of hierarchy in decomposed forms in the rest of the archipelago. I do not want to give only a synchronic analysis of an isolated island society. I speculate on pre-historic formations and transformations far back in time and account for colonial and post-colonial changes in history. Further, my understanding of Rossel exchange has profited by comparison with other systems of ranked exchange in Indonesia and the Pacific. My aim has been to widen the scope of analysis in time and in space from Rossel Island as a small Papuan outlier in an Austronesian sea. The bulk of my book is of course concerned with explicating Rossel Island society and the complex system of ranked exchange that permeates the social life of its people. Part one sets out the general background. I first present the colonial history of the island. I then zoom in on the village of Pum on the north coast of Rossel that has been my base during my periods of fieldwork. I describe settlement history, the clan system and the importance of cognatic kinship. The following chapters outline dimensions of power, the positioning of women and domains of economic life. Part two is the detailed exposition of ranked exchange on Rossel Island. I describe the two types of shell money and the other kinds of valuables and go on to analyse institutions of exchange: bridewealth and mortuary exchanges—which both constitute important moments in the cycle of social reproduction— the complicated pig feast and remaining forms of payment. Chapter Ten—‘The rules and practice of ranked exchange’—is a grand attempt to interpret the various financial operations that allow ranked payments to be launched and the strategies which participants employ. In the epilogue I argue that ranked exchange on Rossel produces a social stratification where a minority of big men dominate the rest of the people through their monopoly of high-ranking shells and superior skill in operating exchange. Joel Robbins provides a summary of Rossel shell money exchange in his following contribution. I shall therefore present only a selective outline of it from my own perspective. Shell money exchange on Rossel Island1 There are some twenty ranked classes of ndap (shell money) in which I distinguish three divisions: the very high, the high and the low division. Every ndap rank has a name and each ndap in the two upper divisions also has its own individual name. These shells are all owned permanently by individual big men (and some women) and are only transferred in inheritance. Shells in the very high division, which were formerly used to pay for cannibal victims, are now out of circulation and have a very special position: they are lent out to 66 Suomen Antropologi:
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